Margaret Atwood "Journey to the Interior"

This poem portrays Attwood's attitude on inner journey to discover oneself. She presents a metaphorical journey to explain a journey into the mind. She examines human behaviour's reasons, understanding one self's mystery, lack of knowledge of individual about themselves. Attwood has composed a Metaphysical journey contrasting the similarities and differences. Her fascination with the bizarre fluidity of identity and its mystery is the focus of this poem.

The first paragraph establishes the similarities between the physical and Metaphysical journey. The usage of the personal pronoun I in this introductory paragraph establishes the personal experience of the poet as it is her who undertakes the physical journey, in the poem's case an awful bushwalk. The poem starts off with a factual matter-of-fact observation There are similarities I notice... The poem is written in the present tense evident in the verbs open, move and grow to indicate that the physical journey is being undertaken at the present time. In this introductory paragraph there is a juxtaposition of the natural world with the man-made world for instance in the simile the hills which the eyes make flat as a wall. The speaker makes the connection with what is 'out there' and the 'here'. The sentence open as I move implies how individuals find a way through the mountains by taking one step at a time using clues and how perspectives change. As the hills open up, the speaker implies that she gains more understanding of herself. This establishes the focus of the poem that this is a journey to self-discovery and a simultaneous physical journey which is the bushwalk itself. This paragraph has a grammatical repetition of the clauses beginning with that the hills, the trees, a cliff and so on to establish an unstructured rhythm emphasizing the object by tis placement with the clause. The simile endless as prairies implies the similarity between the physical and the Metaphysical. Poor country emphasizes the...